While SDN is all about flexibility and programmability of how the packets flow in the network, the next topic of discussion focuses on how the network services are provisioned. In the legacy approach to accommodate new networking services, the service providers must acquire new equipment, allocate power and data center real estate for the device, and then start the provisioning of services. This approach is both costly and inflexible in terms of resource allocation. NFV advocates the virtualization of network infrastructures such as routers, firewalls, and load balancers. In our discussion of NFV, we will understand how NFV brings in elasticity of network resources and look at the OpenStack-based NFV solution.
With the growth of virtual data centers and on-demand networks, there is an increasing need for an elastic networking infrastructure that can be brought to life...